FEATURE: Indian cancer patients sleep rough

‘RATS, MOSQUITOES AND DIRT’:The Tata Memorial Hospital offers subsidized care, but many outpatients cannot afford hotels. Cancer is on the rise across India

AFP, MUMBAI, India

A cancer patient, right, stands outside his temporary shelter on the pavement as his mother watches outside the Tata Memorial hospital in Mumbai, India, on Aug. 1.

Photo: AFP

With just a patchwork of colorful plastic sheets to shield patients from the heavy monsoon rains, a Mumbai street acts as an unofficial ward to one of India’s top cancer treatment centers.

Every year, the Tata Memorial Hospital draws tens of thousands of cancer sufferers thanks to its heavily subsidized medical care. However, the city’s steep hotel and rental prices force scores to sleep on nearby pavements.

“There’s rats, mosquitoes and dirt,” said farmer Suresh Patidar, who stays with his wife Leela, 55, as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer.

“We tried to settle on the other side of the street but the police didn’t allow it,” he said.

“A hotel is very costly. It’s impossible,” he added.

With their home in the central state of Madhya Pradesh at least 12 hours away by train, the Patidars’ cheapest option has been to sleep on the roadside for the past month, despite the regular torrential downpours.

The bandages and surgical masks worn by others on the street betray their common suffering.

The Tata center offers some free or cheap rooms around the city to poor outpatients, and more are being added, but numbers are difficult to manage as Indian cancer cases increase.

“There will always be more people,” hospital spokesman SH Jafri said. “Many NGOs give them food and things on the footpath, so because of that they tend to stay there.”

UNWELCOME NEIGHBORS

The pavements have offered such patients and their families a temporary home for years, but there are signs that local residents are growing impatient over their sick neighbors.

At the nearby police station, Senior Inspector Sunil Tondwalkar said he had written to Mumbai’s municipal authorities asking them to move the sick street-dwellers to more suitable lodgings.

Locals have complained they are blocking the pathways, and that “they’re eating and going to the toilet on the footpath and the streets. It’s not hygienic,” Tondwalkar said.

SOFT TARGET

He also wants the streets cleared because he says hospitals can be a “soft target for terrorists,” while “anti-social elements,” such as thieves or beggars, can infiltrate the patients.

Despite their uncomfortable lodgings, the families for now have little alternative.

Few Indian hospitals offer the range of cancer care and cheap costs of the Tata center, where 60 percent of about 50,000 yearly patients are subsidized and 14 percent are treated for free, according to Jafri.

Those on the street said they were contributing to their medical costs, and had sold their land or livestock to help fund their treatment.

“People living on the streets are people who earn daily, eat daily, so they aren’t people with long-term savings,” said HK Savla, founder of the Jeevan Jyot Cancer Relief and Care Trust.

His charity feeds 600 patients and their families in Mumbai twice a day, and he said 150 to 200 people were usually camped outside the Tata hospital.

“They have to save whatever they have to manage their treatment,” he said.

A hotel is an extra cost that could be more effectively spent.

Now a government-run center, the Tata hospital began life in 1941 as a philanthropic venture by the industrialist Tata family after a relative died of cancer, despite going to Britain for expensive treatment.

“They said, what about the poor patients in India? So they started this,” Jafri said.